LEAD US NOT INTO THE TEMPTATION OF CONTINUED NUCLEAR BOMB TESTING

From website of International Human Rights Observer

Indonesia, an Islamist nation, was the most recent country to ratify on Dec 6, 2011, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.  Almost all the world’s governments have agreed to take this first solid step towards eliminating the terrible threat of nuclear weapons.  If you don’t test them it’s much more difficult to develop, build, and rely upon them.  The CTBT was passed over 15 years ago by the United Nations, and based upon a Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963, and the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty of 1968.  The CTBT has been ratified by almost every country.  As the U.S. threatens to go to war to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear bomb, you’d think we be one of the founding members of the CTBT club, and certainly Israel along with us.  Not so.

A crew loaded a 'bunker buster' at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico in 2007-Photo from Defense Threat Reduction Agency-AP

“The 30,000-pound "bunker-buster" bomb, known as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, was specifically designed to take out the hardened fortifications built by Iran and North Korea to cloak their nuclear programs.”  From 1-28-12 WSJ article Pentagon Seeks Mightier Bomb vs. Iran

he United States is the godfather in a gang of eight nuclear bomb test ban holdouts—together holding the rest of the world hostage to the desire to wield the ultimate version of destructive power.  Who are our atomic bomb lover bedfellows?  Israel, Iran, China, Egypt, Pakistan, India, and North Korea.  Strange bedfellows.  All 8 spoiler countries must ratify before the treaty can be enforced; 157 already have. 

There is always an intricate reasoned political calculus, as to why a nation wants to maintain dominion with its Weapon of Mass Destruction.  In the end, reliance on the power to destroy and threaten insures that none of us on the planet can come to trust each other, nor convert and re-invest in more creative ways to resolve conflict.  At a most fundamental level, trust in massively destructive weapons replaces trust in God.  WMD has become this century’s idol.   Idolatry of a war god.  An Anti-Christ of anti-life.  Every one of these nuclear bombs we possess and perfect can abort thousands of babies in the womb, and thousands more men, women and children in the fireball of the lust for supremacy.  And we maintain we need them, and retain the right to test and care for them.

“I am become megadeath, the destroyer of worlds.” From Hindu Bhagavad Gita

                               Spoken by J. Robert Oppenheimer  - on viewing test of world's first atomic bomb, he’d help create.

 

"All this I will give you," he said, "if you will bow down and worship me." Mt 4:9

The United States, as the world’s undisputed nuclear weapons superpower, has to lead by example on the path to faith and democracy.  It’s do as we do, not merely do as we say.  .  In 1981 I taught a course in the particulars of nuclear disarmament at Prestonsburg [KY] Community College.  We’ve only taken a few small steps towards the goal of putting away the nuclear swords since.  Saber rattling at Iran and North Korea’s fledgling efforts, while ignoring the huge nuclear weapons stockpile in our own eye, will not convince anyone.

Please work and pray to make this treaty a reality.

"We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.  The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner."

Armistice Day speech (11 November 1948), -- General Omar Bradley's Collected Writings, Volume 1 (1967)

Button artwork by Ande McCarthy

A good source for focused efforts on passing & implementing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in the U.S. is the Friends Committee on National Legislation.  This Quaker group has expertise on the political elements of disarmament, and is well organized towards creating the national and international building blocks for true verifiable nuclear disarmament.  Please see their current info at FCNL nuclear weapons issues.       And download and distribute their CTBT factsheet.

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Illumination by Kathy Brahney